2016-2017 FALL / VOLUME 19
TELL ME WHY, TELL ME WHY, TELL ME WHY ( WHY CAN’T WE LIVE TO GETH ER ? ) What do we do when the news makes us cry? Troubled by yet another series of tragic world events, painter and printmaker Enrique Chagoya took up transcendental meditation; his practice led to Illegal Alien’s Guide to Mindfulness, a piece that takes its accordion-folded, multivalent pictorial form from preColumbian codices. Chagoya’s wry, post-Columbian codex projects the artist himself in various guises – a bemused and bespectacled everyman/woman navigating stereotypes of otherness. It’s a position that Chagoya has portrayed throughout his career, remarking that his work is a “conceptual fusion of opposite cultural realities that I have experienced in my lifetime.” This approach informs much of the work in Tell Me Why, a group show at Lisa Sette Gallery exploring identities in conflict.
Tell Me Why takes its name from the plangent 1970s organ tune by Timmy Thomas, which Lisa Sette calls “a beautiful lament of a song.” The song’s central question, “Why can’t we live together?” resonates with political developments of our time, as we drift further and further apart, ensconced in narratives of difference and resentment. Mark Klett’s Fence separating the US/Mexico border south of the Gila Mountains, May 2015 captures the existential absurdity of political effort toward division: a lone steel wall crosses a gully while around it stretches the boundless, bare, and politically indifferent geography of the desert. Sonya Clark exhibits Unraveled Persistence, a Confederate flag meticulously deconstructed, yet even in its unraveled state projecting our nation’s most powerful symbol of divisiveness. And in a literal perspective switch, Charlotte Potter’s Lenticular
Cover: Sonya Clark, Watermelon World, wood, cotton, embroidery, pins, 7” x 5” x 5” Above: Enrique Chagoya, Illegal Alien’s Guide to Mindfulness, acrylic and water based oil paint on de-acidified vintage paper, unique 11.25” x 93”
Top: Mark Klett, Fence Separating the US/Mexico Border South of the Gila Mountains, digital inkjet print, 35” x 46.5”, Edition of 20
TELL ME WHY, TELL ME WHY, TELL ME WHY ( WHY CAN’T WE LIVE TO GETH ER ? ) What do we do when the news makes us cry? Troubled by yet another series of tragic world events, painter and printmaker Enrique Chagoya took up transcendental meditation; his practice led to Illegal Alien’s Guide to Mindfulness, a piece that takes its accordion-folded, multivalent pictorial form from preColumbian codices. Chagoya’s wry, post-Columbian codex projects the artist himself in various guises – a bemused and bespectacled everyman/woman navigating stereotypes of otherness. It’s a position that Chagoya has portrayed throughout his career, remarking that his work is a “conceptual fusion of opposite cultural realities that I have experienced in my lifetime.” This approach informs much of the work in Tell Me Why, a group show at Lisa Sette Gallery exploring identities in conflict.
Tell Me Why takes its name from the plangent 1970s organ tune by Timmy Thomas, which Lisa Sette calls “a beautiful lament of a song.” The song’s central question, “Why can’t we live together?” resonates with political developments of our time, as we drift further and further apart, ensconced in narratives of difference and resentment. Mark Klett’s Fence separating the US/Mexico border south of the Gila Mountains, May 2015 captures the existential absurdity of political effort toward division: a lone steel wall crosses a gully while around it stretches the boundless, bare, and politically indifferent geography of the desert. Sonya Clark exhibits Unraveled Persistence, a Confederate flag meticulously deconstructed, yet even in its unraveled state projecting our nation’s most powerful symbol of divisiveness. And in a literal perspective switch, Charlotte Potter’s Lenticular
Cover: Sonya Clark, Watermelon World, wood, cotton, embroidery, pins, 7” x 5” x 5” Above: Enrique Chagoya, Illegal Alien’s Guide to Mindfulness, acrylic and water based oil paint on de-acidified vintage paper, unique 11.25” x 93”
Top: Mark Klett, Fence Separating the US/Mexico Border South of the Gila Mountains, digital inkjet print, 35” x 46.5”, Edition of 20
America consists of hand-engraved portraits on glass, spliced together and mounted using lenticular technology, so that, says Potter, “when viewing the work straight on the portraits are completely unreadable, and are only revealed by physically changing perspective.” Moving around the piece, the viewer glimpses the ghostly visage of Michael Brown, a young man killed in Ferguson, MO, as it shifts to a depiction of Darren Wilson, the officer who shot him. Siri Devi Khandavilli, a Bangalore-based artist whose cast metal sculptures mimic, in irreverently-altered detail, traditional Hindu temple figurines, will exhibit a series of the incarnations of Vishnu, each brandishing a different weapon. Khandavilli says of the series, “These works are about religions and their relationship with violence and need for control and power, and human brutality disguised in the name of religious duties.” A close examination of the human condition may be dispiriting, but for some of the artists of Tell Me Why it serves as an opportunity for engagement and optimism. Claudio Dicochea’s riotous canvases reimagine the Colonial-era “casta” paintings of Central and South America as modern-day pop culture operas. Dicochea comments, “Everyone is born somewhere. I’m not so interested in the idea of a shared origin, I’m interested in the idea of a shared destination.” Binh Danh works with experimental photographic processes to capture “mortality, memory, history, landscape, justice, evidence, and spirituality.” For this exhibition he has created a portrait of an open-handed Buddha statue, engraved on a daguerreotype plate. When mounted in the gallery’s private central alcove, the luminous, mirror-like surface creates an occasion for reflection and contemplation: allowing viewers to see themselves in the Buddha and see ourselves awaken. Both Dicochea and Danh present works that originate in moments of violence and oppression, yet offer new visions of a hybrid, hopeful future. In an essential way, Tell Me Why is a uniting act, presenting contemporary work by artists from Bangalore to Mexico; the borderlands of the Southwest to California’s immigrant shores. While valuing conceptual exploration over a specific or exacting agenda, the artists of Tell Me Why converge in the shared practice of working to make sense of our common humanity. Connected by their fearless approach to experimentation, beauty, and political engagement, the artists of Tell Me Why insist on artwork as a means of cathartic reconciliation.
Above: Charlotte Potter, Lenticular America, Brown/Wilson (left view), 2016, hand engraved glass cameos, water jet cut and mounted on steel substrate with custom wood frame, 15” x 16” framed, Edition of 3 Right: Sonya Clark, Unraveled Persistence, 2016, deconstructed nylon Confederate Battle Flag, flag pole 104” x 24” x 8”, Edition of 5
America consists of hand-engraved portraits on glass, spliced together and mounted using lenticular technology, so that, says Potter, “when viewing the work straight on the portraits are completely unreadable, and are only revealed by physically changing perspective.” Moving around the piece, the viewer glimpses the ghostly visage of Michael Brown, a young man killed in Ferguson, MO, as it shifts to a depiction of Darren Wilson, the officer who shot him. Siri Devi Khandavilli, a Bangalore-based artist whose cast metal sculptures mimic, in irreverently-altered detail, traditional Hindu temple figurines, will exhibit a series of the incarnations of Vishnu, each brandishing a different weapon. Khandavilli says of the series, “These works are about religions and their relationship with violence and need for control and power, and human brutality disguised in the name of religious duties.” A close examination of the human condition may be dispiriting, but for some of the artists of Tell Me Why it serves as an opportunity for engagement and optimism. Claudio Dicochea’s riotous canvases reimagine the Colonial-era “casta” paintings of Central and South America as modern-day pop culture operas. Dicochea comments, “Everyone is born somewhere. I’m not so interested in the idea of a shared origin, I’m interested in the idea of a shared destination.” Binh Danh works with experimental photographic processes to capture “mortality, memory, history, landscape, justice, evidence, and spirituality.” For this exhibition he has created a portrait of an open-handed Buddha statue, engraved on a daguerreotype plate. When mounted in the gallery’s private central alcove, the luminous, mirror-like surface creates an occasion for reflection and contemplation: allowing viewers to see themselves in the Buddha and see ourselves awaken. Both Dicochea and Danh present works that originate in moments of violence and oppression, yet offer new visions of a hybrid, hopeful future. In an essential way, Tell Me Why is a uniting act, presenting contemporary work by artists from Bangalore to Mexico; the borderlands of the Southwest to California’s immigrant shores. While valuing conceptual exploration over a specific or exacting agenda, the artists of Tell Me Why converge in the shared practice of working to make sense of our common humanity. Connected by their fearless approach to experimentation, beauty, and political engagement, the artists of Tell Me Why insist on artwork as a means of cathartic reconciliation.
Above: Charlotte Potter, Lenticular America, Brown/Wilson (left view), 2016, hand engraved glass cameos, water jet cut and mounted on steel substrate with custom wood frame, 15” x 16” framed, Edition of 3 Right: Sonya Clark, Unraveled Persistence, 2016, deconstructed nylon Confederate Battle Flag, flag pole 104” x 24” x 8”, Edition of 5
C H A R LOT TE POT TER Charlotte Potter, a conceptual artist and glassworker, has made a project of locating glassworking within a wider spectrum of human industries, from medical instrumentation to digital media. An unexpected, forthright portrayal of contemporary experience is one of the most compelling aspects of Potter’s work. “My work begins with a historical model,” Potter states, “I am constantly looking for historical references, relevance, and reasoning for using this material.” In a previous series titled Social Media, Potter created hundreds of glass cameos replicating Facebook profile images. The series presented a unique articulation of how our social interactions are mediated through glass boxes, and located the remarkable precedent for the contemporary circular “profile pic” in the cameo, a popular mode of historical ornamentation and portraiture. Her most recent installation work, History of Photography, presents approximately sixty portraits of influential photographers, from the inception of photography to the era of the selfie. In addressing the historical precedent of photography, glass is revealed again as an integral, intermediary form, the pervasive material through which we identify one another. Using a process that in part involves light-exposed images, Potter has formulated and engraved these portraits with consideration of their subjects’ photographic methodologies, from tin-type to polaroid, and they are presented in an interconnected web of chronology and aesthetic influence. The cameo, an encapsulated image carved in glass or shell, speaks to the dual natures of both photography and glass: permanent and ephemeral, opaque and transparent. Through these qualities, we use images to remember one another. Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It’s what I’ve never seen before that I recognize.
Above: Binh Danh, Divinities of Angkor #1, Daguerreotype, 8” x 6” , Edition of 3
– Diane Arbus
Above: Charlotte Potter, History of Photography: Diane Arbus, (detail), 2017, hand engraved glass cameo, metal
C H A R LOT TE POT TER Charlotte Potter, a conceptual artist and glassworker, has made a project of locating glassworking within a wider spectrum of human industries, from medical instrumentation to digital media. An unexpected, forthright portrayal of contemporary experience is one of the most compelling aspects of Potter’s work. “My work begins with a historical model,” Potter states, “I am constantly looking for historical references, relevance, and reasoning for using this material.” In a previous series titled Social Media, Potter created hundreds of glass cameos replicating Facebook profile images. The series presented a unique articulation of how our social interactions are mediated through glass boxes, and located the remarkable precedent for the contemporary circular “profile pic” in the cameo, a popular mode of historical ornamentation and portraiture. Her most recent installation work, History of Photography, presents approximately sixty portraits of influential photographers, from the inception of photography to the era of the selfie. In addressing the historical precedent of photography, glass is revealed again as an integral, intermediary form, the pervasive material through which we identify one another. Using a process that in part involves light-exposed images, Potter has formulated and engraved these portraits with consideration of their subjects’ photographic methodologies, from tin-type to polaroid, and they are presented in an interconnected web of chronology and aesthetic influence. The cameo, an encapsulated image carved in glass or shell, speaks to the dual natures of both photography and glass: permanent and ephemeral, opaque and transparent. Through these qualities, we use images to remember one another. Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It’s what I’ve never seen before that I recognize.
Above: Binh Danh, Divinities of Angkor #1, Daguerreotype, 8” x 6” , Edition of 3
– Diane Arbus
Above: Charlotte Potter, History of Photography: Diane Arbus, (detail), 2017, hand engraved glass cameo, metal
Above: Luis Gonzalez Palma, Möbius, 2016, photograph printed on canvas, acrylic paint, unique, 33” x 33” Left: Rachel Bess, Fine Origami, 2016, oil on Dibond, 16” x 12”
Above: Luis Gonzalez Palma, Möbius, 2016, photograph printed on canvas, acrylic paint, unique, 33” x 33” Left: Rachel Bess, Fine Origami, 2016, oil on Dibond, 16” x 12”
Left top: Carrie Marill, The Shape of Myself, 2016, acrylic on linen, 38” x 44” Left bottom: Carrie Marill, Open Without Force, 2016, acrylic on linen, 38” x 44” Above: Xawery Wolski, Ossis Tzalan, 2016, Fishbone, 32” x 38” x 4.7”
Left top: Carrie Marill, The Shape of Myself, 2016, acrylic on linen, 38” x 44” Left bottom: Carrie Marill, Open Without Force, 2016, acrylic on linen, 38” x 44” Above: Xawery Wolski, Ossis Tzalan, 2016, Fishbone, 32” x 38” x 4.7”
Mayme Kratz, Into the Face of Stars, 2016, resin, shells, bobcat claws, snake ribs and vertebrae on panel, 60” x 108”
Mayme Kratz, Into the Face of Stars, 2016, resin, shells, bobcat claws, snake ribs and vertebrae on panel, 60” x 108”
ANGELA ELLSWORTH
Through a series of interconnected performances, rituals, objects and installations, multidisciplinary artist Angela Ellsworth has defined an alternate reality; a world alive to the magic of our lived experiences and shared histories. In Sister Wives, a series of objects and performative projects, Ellsworth channeled her female Mormon pioneer ancestors, inviting them to move in step with a contemporary cohort that is empowered rather than oppressed by gender. Ellsworth’s startling Seer Bonnets, an offshoot of this work, comprised draping, pearline pioneer bonnets, delineated in thousands of bristling corsage pins. Adding to this orbit of intriguing and spiritually resonant objects, Ellsworth’s recent work, Pantaloncini, gives dimensional form to the invisible body, as a meticulous arrangement of corsage pins stake out the female form and draw on a history of female occult figures. In these pincushion bloomers the invisible power of the body is made manifest - female intimacy becomes power and a private language is revealed. Ellsworth turns to the hidden history of female mysticism as a means to explore her interest in “the body as a tool for accessing something outside perception.” Pantaloncini are inspired by the 20th-century artist and spiritualist Emma Kunz, whose exquisite drawings Ellsworth considers “extrasensory messages from another dimension.” These geometric patterns bisect the glistening, beaded surfaces of Ellsworth’s forms, communicating a sly, sibylline missive from a hidden world.
Above: Angela Ellsworth, Seer Bonnet XXIV (Sister Sarah) and Seer Bonnet XXV (Sister Maria), 2016, 33,407 pearl corsage pins, fabric, steel, 65” x 48” x 24” Left: Angela Ellsworth, Pantaloncini: Work No. 064 (Emma), 2016, 100,000+ pearl corsage pins, colored dress pins, fabric, steel, 23” x 28.5” x 11.5”
ANGELA ELLSWORTH
Through a series of interconnected performances, rituals, objects and installations, multidisciplinary artist Angela Ellsworth has defined an alternate reality; a world alive to the magic of our lived experiences and shared histories. In Sister Wives, a series of objects and performative projects, Ellsworth channeled her female Mormon pioneer ancestors, inviting them to move in step with a contemporary cohort that is empowered rather than oppressed by gender. Ellsworth’s startling Seer Bonnets, an offshoot of this work, comprised draping, pearline pioneer bonnets, delineated in thousands of bristling corsage pins. Adding to this orbit of intriguing and spiritually resonant objects, Ellsworth’s recent work, Pantaloncini, gives dimensional form to the invisible body, as a meticulous arrangement of corsage pins stake out the female form and draw on a history of female occult figures. In these pincushion bloomers the invisible power of the body is made manifest - female intimacy becomes power and a private language is revealed. Ellsworth turns to the hidden history of female mysticism as a means to explore her interest in “the body as a tool for accessing something outside perception.” Pantaloncini are inspired by the 20th-century artist and spiritualist Emma Kunz, whose exquisite drawings Ellsworth considers “extrasensory messages from another dimension.” These geometric patterns bisect the glistening, beaded surfaces of Ellsworth’s forms, communicating a sly, sibylline missive from a hidden world.
Above: Angela Ellsworth, Seer Bonnet XXIV (Sister Sarah) and Seer Bonnet XXV (Sister Maria), 2016, 33,407 pearl corsage pins, fabric, steel, 65” x 48” x 24” Left: Angela Ellsworth, Pantaloncini: Work No. 064 (Emma), 2016, 100,000+ pearl corsage pins, colored dress pins, fabric, steel, 23” x 28.5” x 11.5”
Maximo Gonzalez, Yo Era Ese Árbol (I Was That Tree), 2016, Collage: out-of-circulation currency, 35” x 49”
Maximo Gonzalez, Yo Era Ese Árbol (I Was That Tree), 2016, Collage: out-of-circulation currency, 35” x 49”
Marie Navarre, learn from the pine (from Basho), 2016, rag paper, Japanese washi, archival digital print on vellum, silk thread, 24.5� x 64�, Edition of 5
Marie Navarre, learn from the pine (from Basho), 2016, rag paper, Japanese washi, archival digital print on vellum, silk thread, 24.5� x 64�, Edition of 5
Jessica Joslin, Nycteris, (detail), 2016, antique hardware and findings, brass, bone, silver, glove leather, glass eyes, 15” x 32” x 16”
EXHIBITION SCHEDULE 2016/2017 September – October, 2016 November – January, 2016 - 2017
Mayme Kratz / Marie Navarre
January – February, 2017
Luis Gonzalez Palma: Möbius
March – April, 2017 May – June, 2017
Mark Klett: Border Markers
“Tell Me Why, Tell Me Why, Tell Me Why (Why Can’t We Live Together?)”: Enrique Chagoya, Sonya Clark, Claudio Dicochea, Binh Danh, Angela Ellsworth, Maximo Gonzalez, Siri Devi Khandavilli, Mark Klett, Carrie Marill, Luis Molina-Pantin, Kambui Olujimi, Charlotte Potter.
David Kroll / Jessica Joslin
ART FAIRS 2016 - 2017 EXPO CHICAGO September 22 - 25, 2016
Chicago/Navy Pier Festival Hall 600 East Grand Ave Chicago, Illinois USA
ART MIAMI Nov 29 - Dec 4, 2016
The Art Miami Pavilion Midtown – Wynwood Arts District 3101 NE 1st Avenue, Miami, Florida USA
The Photography Show Presented by AIPAD March 29 - April 2, 2017
Pier 94 711 12th Avenue New York, New York USA
210 East Catalina, Phoenix, Arizona 85012 telephone 480-990-7342 facsimile 480-970-0825 www.lisasettegallery.com Hours: Tuesday-Friday: 10 am to 5 pm | Saturday: 12 to 5 pm | and by appointment Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day, and Fourth of July © Lisa Sette Gallery. Photographs & essays from this publication may not be reproduced without the permission of Lisa Sette Gallery. Essays written by Megan Bates. Design: ps:studios